The Frisbie Pie Company  

Tuesday, July 22, 2008

In 1871, in the wake of the Civil War, William Russell Frisbie moved from Bransford, Connecticut, where his father, Russell, had operated a successful grist mill, to Bridgeport, Connecticut. Hired to manage a new bakery, a branch of the Olds Baking Company of New Haven, he soon bought it outright and named it the Frisbie Pie Company (363 Kossuth Street). W.R. died in 1903 and his son, Joseph P., manned the ovens until his death in 1940. Under his direction the small company grew from six to two hundred and fifty routes, and shops were opened in Hartford, Connecticut; Poughkeepsie, New York; and Providence, Rhode Island. His widow, Marian Rose Frisbie, and long-time plant manager, Joseph J. Vaughn, baked on until August 1958 and reached a zenith production of 80,000 pies per day in 1956.
In this otherwise simple baking operation we find the origin of the earliest Frisbee! Now the company offered a variety of bakery goodies, including pies and cookies, and therein resides the roots of the controversy. For there are two crusty schools concerning Frisbee's origins: the Pie-Tin School and the Cookie- Tin School, each camp holding devoutly to its own argument.
The Pie-Tin School. The pie-tin people claim Yale students bought Frisbie's pies (undoubtedly a treat in themselves) and tossed the prototype all over Eli's campus. These early throwers would exclaim "Frisbie" to signal the catcher. And well they might, for a tin Frisbee is something else again to catch.
The Cookie-Tin School. Now the cookie tin people agree on these details save one: they insist that the true, original prototype was the cookie-tin lid that held in the goodness of Frisbie's sugar cookies.

From: Frisbee, A Practitioner's Manual and Definitive Treatise
By: Stancil E.D. Johnson, M.D.

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